Having set up Google Adwords for one of our sites we decided to take it a step further and initiate a shopping campaign to list the individual products. This lets us promote products on a pay-per-click basis.
The end result is that our products appear in the Google Shopping search results similar to this page of results, as well as other targeted adverts on the website.
We linked our Google Merchant Center account to our Adwords account. Product data is handled in XML and we use a page template within our WordPress theme in the site to loop through all our product data and output exactly as required by GMC.
We set up a custom field for Google category in each product category and assign our categories to the closest match on Google’s list and then import Google’s list as a dropdown field and apply to each category in the WordPress admin.
Importing the final XML file to GMC can be manual or automatic. Finally, to be able to check the stock levels of any specific product we include a couple of lines of code on the product pages.
Once the products are successfully imported, we return to Adwords to set up the shopping campaign, finalise costs and scheduling. Within hours these ads appear on Google.
We track the conversions of clicks to sales to prove viability of the system. Google provides a tracking code to apply on the site when a sale is successful. We can then balance out the cost of the campaign with the value of the sales completed. This gives us a guide as to how much is worth spending on advertising and if it’s generally worthwhile.
Site built by
